7/16/2008 @ 1:40PM

Khodorkovsky Counts On A Changed Russia

Little seems to have changed in Russia since the fresh-faced Dmitry Medvedev took over the presidency from Vladimir Putin, but jailed oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky is hoping his luck will turn for the better under the young head of state.

Khodorkovsky seems to believe that Medvedev’s promises to stamp out corruption and clean up the court system could get him of the slammer. On Wednesday, his lawyer asked for the former billionaire to be put on parole.

“We have much hope in the words of Medvedev on the independence of the judiciary,” Yury Schmidt told the AFP news agency.

After stepping into the infamous shoes of his predecessor, Medvedev, a former corporate lawyer and law professor, has tried to throw aside accusations that he would just be a puppet for Putin, and acknowledged that corruption in Russia was rife.

Russia ranks at number 143 out of 179, on the 2007 Corruption Perceptions Index compiled by the organization Transparency International. Russia’s court system, with its infamous “telephone sentences” (the practice by which judges are told what the sentence should be through a phone call from the executive) has been one of Medvedev’s main areas of focus. (See “Russia’s $120 Billion Elephant: Corruption”)

Even on Wednesday Medvedev told a meeting with Russian prosecutors that the court system needed to change urgently to make it completely independent of external influences. The president’s proposals focus on two issues: making the system for appointing judges more transparent, and allowing corrupt judges to be prosecuted. Currently, Russian judges are seen as virtually untouchable.

According to Elena Panfilova of Transparency International in Moscow, it is too early to say whether or not the system will change drastically under Medvedev. “He has shown some strong leadership, but it depends on how seriously the judicial community takes his very right words,” she told Forbes.com.

Khodorkovsky’s case could be a major test for Medvedev.

The founder of Yukos, and once Russia’s richest man, Khordorkovsky was thrown in jail in 2005, after he was convicted of fraud and tax evasion, and was sentenced to eight years in prison. Yukos’s assets were sold off in an auction, with most of them going to the state-controlled oil company Rosneft.

Khodorkovsky, who was last on the Forbes billionaires list in 2005, has so far spent 1,725 days in jail, and has another 1,195 to go, if he serves the full sentence passed by the Moscow City Court, according to the former billionaire’s website. He could now face even more time in jail now: on July 1, new charges accusing him of laundering $28.0 billion were filed by Russian prosecutors.

The prisoner and his supporters have consistently maintained that his case had nothing to do with tax evasion and fraud, and everything to do with his criticisms of the government and alleged political ambitions.